Media Players

[Mark]

Great news: WinAmp 5.5 now does Album Art. Goodbye WMP 11?

www.winamp.com

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Great news: WinAmp 5.5 now does Album Art. Goodbye WMP 11?

I can't remember to having said "hello wmp"... Why using WMP when I can have a functional beast, which can play and understand every format, which makes conversion and tagging easy?-)

[Mark]

It's about time I revived this thread. And what better way to do it than by giving some love to the foobar2000 media player.

This piece of freeware is insanely customisable, and extremely powerful when it comes to tagging and organising a huge, hard drive-based music library. I've attached a pic of my config - I call it simply, 'Cool Grey'. (If any foobar2000 users would like the theme file, PM me ... though you need the facets .dll installed )

I shan't bang on about this superb player, but feel free to ask any questions. I'm only getting started with it, so I may not have an answer for everything. This site, however, does - plus the software for download.

foobar2000.org

Trust me, PC users: try this and you'll never use WMP, Winamp, MediaMonkey and especially iTunes again.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Another happy foobar2000 user here. 

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Long-time-fb2k user here. Fb2k support is in HA forum. I'm there as well, you can recognize me by the avatar

This is my fb2k on my bigger computer, for music organisation. Based on ColumnsUI, I always used it. DefaultUI is too limited. You also see the result of the Tone poems thread , I bought the 2 Bax CDs (downloads) from Chandos.



This is my "living room playback fullscreen htpc fb2k":



Those are tabbed layouts, so you see only specific situations.

[Mark]

This is my fb2k on my bigger computer, for music organisation. Based on ColumnsUI, I always used it. DefaultUI is too limited.

I thought Columns UI was a bit buggy. What does it have that DUI doesn't?

Also, what third-party plugins do people recommend?

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

That looks great, Wurstwasser!

[mahler10th]

Wow.  I am going to get Foobar RIGHT NOW.  Thanks guys.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

I thought Columns UI was a bit buggy. What does it have that DUI doesn't?

No it's not buggy, Musicmusic is a good and renowned developer there. His releases are pretty good and free from criticle bugs.

Basically:
- You can have album art inside the playlist.
- NG Playlist (colors, what it displays) is much more configurable (with tagz Code)
- user defined group rows.
- You can use all components "foo_uie_blah.dll" which have been written for columnsUI. Numerous.
- It's on the middle of the way to geekdom.
DefaultUI: little geeky - ColumnsUI: medium geeky - PanelsUI(banned): - heavy geekdom.

Currently it's an either/or situation. You cannot use default UI elements inside columnsUI (e.g. Facets), vice versa you cannot use ColumnsUI elements in defaultUI. E.g. like Explorer tree panel.
More choice for columnsUI though. Facets in the default UI world is the "Filter panels" which are built into columnsUI.

In my layout you see the info panel. You cannot have this in default layout. This is foo_uie_trackinfo_mod.dll.

Development for ColumnsUI elements is more direct and faster and flexible  I'd say. Because this is done by third party developers. Development of default UI elements is rather slow. Because this is only done by the inner circle. Peter and foosion and Frank (facets). Often they do not agree because of strong principles, so functionality is not added. Because of such principles, some developers already left the boat. Or have been banned. (foo_cwb_hooks, foo_ui_panels, Acropolis and his components). The projects core has a strong elitist approach, definitely.

[Mark]

No it's not buggy, Musicmusic is a good and renowned developer there. His releases are pretty good and free from criticle bugs.

Basically:
- You can have album art inside the playlist.
- NG Playlist (colors, what it displays) is much more configurable (with tagz Code)
- user defined group rows.
- You can use all components "foo_uie_blah.dll" which have been written for columnsUI. Numerous.
- It's on the middle of the way to geekdom.
DefaultUI: little geeky - ColumnsUI: medium geeky - PanelsUI(banned): - heavy geekdom.

Currently it's an either/or situation. You cannot use default UI elements inside columnsUI (e.g. Facets), vice versa you cannot use ColumnsUI elements in defaultUI. E.g. like Explorer tree panel.
More choice for columnsUI though. Facets in the default UI world is the "Filter panels" which are built into columnsUI.

In my layout you see the info panel. You cannot have this in default layout. This is foo_uie_trackinfo_mod.dll.

Development for ColumnsUI elements is more direct and faster and flexible  I'd say. Because this is done by third party developers. Development of default UI elements is rather slow. Because this is only done by the inner circle. Peter and foosion and Frank (facets). Often they do not agree because of strong principles, so functionality is not added. Because of such principles, some developers already left the boat. Or have been banned. (foo_cwb_hooks, foo_ui_panels, Acropolis and his components). The projects core has a strong elitist approach, definitely.

Thanks for this.

Sounds like I'm entering an esoteric world indeed. Why is PanelsUI banned?

Incidentally, I finally got round to registering at HA after many years of lurking there on occasion. On all forums apart from this one (which isn't many), I'm registered as the obscure German/Danish composer, Kuhlau. No idea why.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

I'm Squeller there.
The PanelsUI developer "Terrestrial" left after this thread